This is one of the images I took while we were on our trip up north. The lighting on the day I shot this was horrible. It was hazy, the sky was washed out and the light was very harsh. The only reason I took the picture was to have an image for the lighthouse collection.

But once I saw this image at home, I was very intrigued by the person on the end of the pier fishing and sitting on that bucket. I cropped the image vertically so that the person would become more a part of the scene. And then I left the picture alone. Didn’t think anymore about it, until last night.

Last night I was in a black and white mood. I was looking through old images and hoping something would jump out at me. Then I remembered this shot. I loaded it into Photoshop and began to work on it. Almost from the start I had a nostalgic feeling about this shot. It just felt old to me. Something about the lighthouse and that fisherman. This image could just as easily been taken a hundred years ago in 1909.

So as I worked on the image I kept that old feeling in me and decided it needed an aged look to it. I don’t normally add grain to my images, but in this case it called for it. I feel the grain adds a texture that brings out that old feeling even more.  And even though I often used vignetting in my black and white images, normally you don’t ever know it’s there unless you’re looking for it. But again, in this case the heavier vignetting was called for.  For one thing, that washed out sky needed something in it. But the vignetting also adds to the old feel.

I never know how I feel about an image that I create at night until I see it in the morning. I think this one looks better this morning than it did last night.  I’m pretty proud of how this image came out. This image shows once again that you should never give up on an image. Even though it didn’t turn out like you wanted it to originally, there may be something beautiful waiting to emerge when the time is right.

I’m finally getting around to processing my landscape images from Door County. Here’s some of the nicer ones.

The first two images were shot right outside of the restaurant we ate at on our wedding night, (The Sunset Bar and Grill. Awesome Prime Rib!!) They’re looking out on Green Bay from a point of land known as Rileys Point. We were hoping for a nice, colorful sunset, but the clouds didn’t behave for us. Still was able to get these nice shots though.

The rest of the images were shot at Cave Point County Park. Cave Point is located inside of Whitefish Dunes State Park.  The shoreline is made of limestone bluffs and the waves of Lake Michigan have carved caves into the bluffs. On the day we were there the wave action was minimal. I’d love to see this place on a big wave day. I’d also like to check it out in the winter. Bet there are some cool ice formations then.

The new Yosemite Nature Notes is up. This is video number six in the series and is titled “Maps”. It’s about the history of maps in Yosemite and how the maps have been used over the years.  Film maker Ken Burns is in the video and talks about the importance of maps in Yosemite. There is also a search for one of the original park boundary markers from the 1800′s. The film runs about 10 minutes and is worth checking out.

Yosemite Nature Notes 6: Maps

We are under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch in Kenosha County and much of Southern and Central Wisconsin until 10 tonight.

From the National Weather Service:

Severe Thunderstorm Watch 527 is effect until 10 PM this evening south of a line generally from Wisconsin Dells to Port Washington. Look for strong to severe thunderstorms to develop mainly across portions of southwest into south-central Wisconsin late this afternoon. Thunderstorms are expected to be scattered at first…but then transition into a line moving to the east during the early evening. Any severe thunderstorms will be capable of producing damaging straight line winds and large hail.

It’s been a beautiful, sunny day today with temps around 75 here at the house. But now at 3:45pm the clouds have started moving in and it’s totally overcast. The main line of storms is still well to our west near Madison. A secondary line of storms is just moving into Wisconsin from Minnesota. It looks like this second line has stronger storms than the first. Going to get interesting this evening.

I’ll keep ya posted.